4 Yrs NJSP for Mother of Malnourished Infant

PRESS RELEASE
June 17, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Bernie Weisenfeld- PIO

Leah Bozarth (DOB 4/7/89), of Pittsgrove NJ was sentenced today to four years in New Jersey state prison after pleading guilty to second-degree child endangerment, causing her 15-month old son to be malnourished in 2009 while investigators found pizza boxes and cigarette cartons in her former Monroe Township NJ home.

Though Superior Court Judge M. Christine Allen-Jackson called the crime “particularly heinous” and the victim “particularly vulnerable,” she sentenced Bozarth in the range of a third-degree offense, owing to the defendant’s lack of a prior criminal record and her willingness to follow state Division of Youth and Family Service conditions to reunite with her son, now living with her parents.

Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Staci Scheetz asked for a longer imprisonment, saying “this was a very young child who was neglected and not fed. This child was completely dependent on Miss Bozarth and its father.” The child, weighing 15 pounds when found as a result of an anonymous call to DYFS, had “serious medical and developmental harm,” Scheetz said. She also cited a DYFS worker’s discovery of pizza boxes, cigarette cartons and fast food containers in the home. “There was certainly sufficient money for those items,” Scheetz said.

Child endangerment charges are still pending against the infant’s biological father, Peter Morselander (DOB 2/14/85), of Glassboro.